Naming of the County

White County Indiana was formed in 1834 and named for Colonel Isaac White, one of 13 United States Counties named in honor of fallen soldiers of the historic Battle of Tippecanoe.

Isaac White was born around 1776 in Prince William County, Virginia, to a family of English origin, shortly after the Revolutionary War began. When he was 23 years old, Isaac and his brother, Thomas, left home, unhappy with their mother's second marriage. They traveled to Vincennes, where Isaac met and married Sallie Leech, daughter of Judge George Leech. Their union produced three children, George Washington Leech White, Harriet Grandison White, and Juliet Greenville White.

He was an American frontiersman who was in charge of the salt works in Equality, Illinois. Isaac White was also a Colonel in the Illinois Militia. He was a close friend to Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory, and Joseph Hamilton Daviess, a U.S. District Attorney for Kentucky.

Like Daviess, White answered Governor William Harrison's call for volunteers in 1811 to march on Tecumseh's village at Prophetstown. Governor Harrison declined the offer of Illinois troops. Colonel White, therefore, enlisted as a private in the Indiana dragoons, which was under the command of Joseph Daviess for Indiana service. At Fort Vincennes, the two exchanged swords as a demonstration of mutual respect.

Both White and Daviess were killed on Nov. 7, 1811, and buried in a common grave at the Battle of Tippecanoe, just a few miles south of what is now the city of Monticello. White's name is the last inscribed on the tablet honoring that war's dead.